What's up SerpaSquad! Tanner here and I'm back with another project.
The requests have been piling up for this one non-stop and it's something I've
wanted to do for awhile as well. In this one, we'll take baby steps into the amazing world of bonsai.
For this one I went with a Ficus salicifolia. I chose
this tree primarily because it can thrive inside year round. Ficus tend
to be a pretty forgiving plant as well, so it's probably a good one for me to start.
In addition to the tree I have several gauges of Training Wire, a Plastic Bonsai Dish,
Knitting Mesh, a Tropical Substrate Blend and my tools. To get
started I took the ficus out of its pot. Using a copper wire I removed all of the
substrate, exposing the roots to get a better idea of what I'm working with.
Some of the lower hanging roots were snipped off to make planting easier.
As is, this tree also has too much foliage on the trunk. The excess leaves
were trimmed to clean things up.
Now this I can work with and I have a general idea of how I want it
to look. Before it can be manipulated though, everything needs wired. A length
of wire was unrolled, cut to size and wrapped around the trunk of the the tree
with an angled spiral. After that all of the branches were wired in a similar way.
In doing so it was wrapped around the trunk of the tree and then around the branches
to create stability. Here's the tree now, wired and ready to be trained to a more
interesting shape. I carefully adjusted the trunk and branches until I got a
decent shape to start. This isn't exactly how I want it, but I'll fine tune it more
once the tree is planted. Before that I cut a few lengths of wire. Two
of them were bent like so. Squares of knitting mesh were cut out for the
drainage holes. The wires were inserted through the mesh and bent over on the
underside to keep them in place.
The other wires were inserted through holes on the underside of the dish to secure the tree.
From there I put down an initial of substrate layer in the dish. It was
evened out with my trusty fan brush and then the the ficus was positioned using the rule
of thirds. Once the placement was good, I secured it
down with the wires from earlier. The remainder of the dish was topped off with more substrate.
After that I went and fine tuned the position of the tree. As you would expect
from me, I can't go and do a project like this without doing some kind of
hardscape. For this I have Pea Pebbles and River Stones. I
moved some of the substrate aside with my brush and configured the stones
around the tree in a way that I thought looked aesthetically pleasing. The empty
spaces were filled back in with the substrate. A project like this also
really isn't complete without some moss. I have Badge Moss and Thread Moss.
A few patches were nestled between the stones and pea pebbles were
sprinkled through as accents. I continued with this process until the dish was completely topped off.
Lastly I peppered in some tiny stones from the tropical substrate to create additional texture.
Before taking a closer look at the final product we got
to get this thing watered. I set the dish in my stationary tub and gave everything
good spray down with some dechlorinated water.
And here is the finished result. I'm good with plants and design, but this
was my first time trying to make a bonsai from scratch. All things considered I
think I did a pretty good job for my first try. If it's something that
interests you I'd highly recommend doing some research. There's a lot of great
material out there. As far as this one goes, it's still in the pre-bonsai
stage. It's going to be an ongoing process of maintenance and fine-tuning
to get it just right. In that respect, it's very similar to most of the other
projects you see me do on this channel. In fact the entire platform is primarily
uilt on an appreciation and interest in nature, which ties in with my obsession
to build things and create art. Luckily I can share my hobbies and interests with
you, in hopes to inspire you to reconnect with nature and find joy in creating
your own works. Even if they have nothing to do with nature. With that and after
doing a project about trees, this is a good time to mention my contribution of
200 trees to the team trees movement. In case you don't know, team trees is a
collaboration of various YouTubers to plant 20 million trees by the end of
2019 for the benefit of future generations. If you're interested in
being a part of this as well, I'll link up everything in the video
description for your convenience. Donating $1 accounts for 1 tree. Anyway,
I really hope you all enjoyed this one and are inspired to do a project of
your own. If you want to see future bonsai trees like this Ficus benjamina,
progress on this one or other nature related projects, then be sure to
subscribe and turn on post notifications. I'll see you all in the next one
SerpaSquad. Take care and peace!